Pan India Mobile Number Portability By March 31

The Telecom Commission finally accepted Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) recommendation for full mobile number portability (MNP) which is now expected to be implemented across India by March 31, 2015. The move will allow subscribers to shift their mobile service on to the network of any telecom operator throughout the country without changing their cellphone number.

Pan India MNP has been one of the key components of the National Telecom Policy ever since the announcement was made. However, for various reasons between the telecom regulatory authority and telecom department delayed the roll out of MNP across India. The industry had been waiting for a clearer guidelines on this after the new government steps in.

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had already spoken about this development in the Lok Sabha sometime in July this year.

Presently the facility of MNP is restricted to the licensed service area (LSA) only. Currently, only two companies Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solution, operate to provide mobile number portability service. TRAI said that these companies have still around five years before their license validity expires. It has submitted its reply to DoT on July 21 which was be placed before inter-ministerial panel telecom commission for its consideration, PTI said in a report then.

The department of telecom (DoT) had also asked for TRAI view on additional entry fee, performance bank guarantee and bank financial guarantee to be charged from existing MNP service providers, an official reported to PTI earlier.

As per the latest data released by the TRAI, about 13 crore people have requested for MNP facility as on August 31.

TRAI in its recommendation on full MNP had suggested to give telecom operators six-month time to make necessary changes in their network from the date the proposal is cleared. The source said that DoT will make efforts to get it expeditiously done in about five-month time.

TRAI has also said that the telecom subscriber base crossed the 95-crore mark in August, after a gap of more than two years, on the back of higher mobile users whose number touched 92.43 crore.

“The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 946.4 million at the end of July, 2014 to 951.84 million at the end of August, 2014,” TRAI said in a statement.

Total wireless subscriber base, which includes both mobile and internet dongle connections, increased to 924.32 million in August from 91.87 crore at the end of July, it said. The number of number of broadband subscribers also increased to 7.43 crore at the end of August from 7 crore at the end of July 2014.

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